Some of the people who have to return to the office are not returning to the same situations. Private offices were lost and employers gave up real estate and went to hoteling. I wouldn’t be happy about that and it would be as if the employer reneged on an agreement.
“...and it would be as if the employer reneged on an agreement.”
And in some cases they did. My son’s wife accepted a job in 2022 with a large employer upon the express representation that she could work remotely. They then sold their house in an urban cesspool and brought a place in a conservative bubble about 1.5 hours away. The employer has recently told all employees to return to the office by September 1 or they will be terminated. She now works for another company.
One of the attractive aspects of working for my current employer was a dedicated office with a lockable door. I had that onsite. It comes at an "overhead" cost to the customer contract based on square feet. As a 100% remote employee, the customer pays nothing for "overhead". It is reflected in the hourly rates charged for my labor. It adds up to serious money with a team of 25 computer scientists.
When I first hired on, the company was employee owned. We owned our buildings and infrastructure. The company went public in 2007. A decision was made to outsource accounting and stock management. Next, all the real estate was sold to a holding company. The holding company leases back space on a contract by contract basis. The advantage of no longer owning the real estate is the ability to exit an unfavorable business environment quickly. California is feeling the consequences of that choice. Because we are spread out over every state in the union and multiple foreign countries, the payroll vendor has to track labor hours by zip code and pay state income taxes where applicable on the payroll. As employees, that complicates tax time. I've had to file in as many as 4 different states in some years.
The model of leasing back floor space has come in handy with the new working from home model. Less money going to floor space rentals. Some of that savings was reinvested in beefed up company networking. A big win for those working remotely. The VPN can download at 40 Mbps. My fiber optic can move 980 Mbps up/down, so the company VPN is still the limiting factor. Some government customer VPNs are barely capable of move 1 Mbps.